Petroleum is a commodity that is becoming more expensive, impacting the cost of plastic materials and ultimately end-products. Also, petroleum is a non-sustainable material and is subject to geopolitical and environmental forces that further impact cost and future availability. Therefore, an alternative source of chemical feedstock for the production of polymers and for other chemical reactions is desirable, one that is not subject to geopolitical and environmental influences.
Feathers may provide such an alternative. Poultry feathers are composed of approximately 90% keratin and are a plentiful and readily-available byproduct in the food processing industry, with most of the material being disposed of as waste. However, previous documented efforts using chicken feathers as a chemical feedstock have either used solvents or harsh chemicals or have been limited for the purpose of extracting the keratin as an end product.
Once prepared, a functional substrate can be used for a variety of applications. Documented efforts for generation and use of hydrocarbon based nanostructures, films and other building blocks include: generation of short polypeptides that can self-assemble used for nano delivery systems of drugs and compounds across host membranes, filtration systems, and pharmaceutical compositions (U.S. Pat. No. 7,671,258 “Surfactant peptide nanostructures, and uses thereof”); and synthesis of Synthetic Polymer Complements having surface that include functional groups that are complementary to surface sites of targets such as nanostructures or macromolecular targets and capable of interacting with such targets (U.S. Pat. No. 6,884,842 “Molecular compounds having complementary surfaces to targets”).